


Lonelydale

by Gabrielle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-05
Updated: 2009-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabrielle/pseuds/Gabrielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is a Watcher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lonelydale

Lonelydale

 

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is a Watcher.

All that rigorous and comprehensive training and none of it seems to mean anything.

Being a Watcher is an important job, a dangerous one, and the title alone is supposed to guarantee at least the beginnings of respect from the Slayer you're assigned, but here Wesley is with _two_ and he can barely get either of them to speak to him, let alone rely on the wisdom and judgment his superiours have assured him he possesses.

It's lonely, and not in the ways he expected. There's something barren and helpless about the place he inhabits inside, a place where he wonders sometimes if they're right – if he's really just an overeducated imbecile who knows nothing about the real business of fighting demons.

It's not fair, he rails inwardly. If they'd just give him a chance, he knows there are things he could show them, aid he could render, battles he could win. And he'd learn, too, only they never make space for him to do that. They call him names and they mock him and none of them bother to hide their contempt.

He sits in the dark and wonders if maybe he should have rebelled against his father, chosen another line of work. Because for him being a Watcher is nothing, and it's the sort of nothing that eats away at the soul, ripping away pieces of it until you look in the mirror and see no one at all, just a pathetic shell of a man in a suit that doesn't quite fit with a meaningless title whose honours are still bestowed on the man who no longer owns it. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is the Watcher…but everyone still goes running to Rupert Giles.

Of course nothing will change. For all his fancies of quitting or of giving them all a good dressing down, he's too frightened to walk away or say anything that might mean admitting they've hurt him. Tomorrow he will wake up and put pomade on his hair and polish his glasses and go back to the library where everything will be the same as it was yesterday, or perhaps worse.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is a Watcher, and all that means is that he's standing on the outside looking in.

The End.


End file.
